books.google.com - Workplace democracy. Empowerment. Team leaders. Knowledge workers. This is the language of “the new work order” promoted by today’s management, which promises more meaningful and satisfying work, greater respect for diversity, and more democratic distribution of knowledge.But Gee, Hull, and Lankshear...http://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Work_Order.html?id=QSEzYevW-PMC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareThe New Work Order

The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism

Workplace democracy. Empowerment. Team leaders. Knowledge workers. This is the language of “the new work order” promoted by today’s management, which promises more meaningful and satisfying work, greater respect for diversity, and more democratic distribution of knowledge.But Gee, Hull, and Lankshear find startling contradictions in this brave new workplace—escalating inequality between individuals, nations, and even continents. They show how newly created alliances between business, educators, and psychologists may point to a hidden capitalist agenda more interested in preserving the status quo than establishing a new work order.This book offers a compelling and controversial account of global capitalism in the information age and the ways it affects language, literacy, learning, and life chances. It will be of particular interest to students in education, business, sociology, sociolinguistics, and communication studies.

Popular passages

Page 63 - Dialogues provide the format for novices to adopt the discourse structure, goals, values, and belief systems of scientific practice. Over time, the community of learners adopts a common voice and common knowledge base, a shared system of meaning, beliefs, and activity that is as often implicit as it is explicit.

Page 10 - Discourse is composed of ways of talking, listening, reading, writing, acting, interacting, believing, valuing, and using tools and objects, in particular settings and at specific times, so as to display or to recognize a particular social identity. Law school teachers and students enact specific social identities or 'social positions' in the Discourse of law school. The Discourse creates social positions (or perspectives) from which people are 'invited...

Page 71 - Western culture and its values. The first response was to colonize the rest of the world. to attempt to homogenize other cultures in the image of the western middle class - it is this response that the critics of capitalism are best poised to attack. But the new post-industrial and post-colonial capitalism has found virtue in diversity. Bauman puts the matter as follows: Contrary to the anguished forebodings of the 'mass culture

Page 64 - In many forms of cooperative learning. students are left to construct learning goals for themselves: the goals change over time as interests change. and groups sometimes concoct goals far different from those envisaged by the authorities. ... In our classroom. the research direction of the group is not so democratic: . . . Teachers are encouraged to hold goals for each research group. hoping that the students will reach those goals through their own efforts. But if they do not. the teacher will invite...

Page 58 - IQ] and knowledge of the landscape (experience and disciplinary expertise]. The master pilot stands alert to possible changes. takes a strategic view of time and weather. works through choices about route and schedule with the costs and benefits in mind. And it's the same with people who pilot their minds well - who.

Page 47 - ... will become less economically secure. The fortunes of the most well-off and the least will thus continue to diverge. By 2020, the top fifth of American earners will account for more than 60 percent of all the income earned by Americans; the bottom fifth, for 2 percent. Symbolic analysts will withdraw into ever more isolated enclaves, within which they will pool their resources rather than share them with other Americans or invest them in ways that improve other Americans

Page 51 - ... pp. 34-49). The mobot was designed by RA Brooks (see Brooks 1991 ) and has no central brain, but instead has 'intelligence' and decision-making capacities distributed throughout its mechanical body and, indeed, throughout its environment as well. The mobot simply roams around until its video camera spots the shape of a soda can on a desk. This signal triggers the wheels of the mobot and propels it in front of the can. Rather than wait for a message from a central brain, the arm of the robot 'learns'...

References to this book

About the author (1996)

James Paul Gee is professor of education at Clark University; Glynda Hull is professor of language and literacy education at the University of California at Berkeley; and Colin Lankshear is professor in the School of Language and Literacy Education at Queensland University of Technology. James Paul Gee is professor of education at Clark University; Glynda Hull is professor of language and literacy education at the University of California at Berkeley; and Colin Lankshear is professor in the School of Language and Literacy Education at Queensland University of Technology. James Paul Gee is professor of education at Clark University; Glynda Hull is professor of language and literacy education at the University of California at Berkeley; and Colin Lankshear is professor in the School of Language and Literacy Education at Queensland University of Technology.